Chukchi Sea
The Chukchi Sea ( English Chukchi Sea , Russian Чуко́тское мо́ре / Tschukotskoje more ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean .
The Chukchi Sea is located north of the Bering Strait on the border between America and Asia and extends immediately north of the Arctic Circle from about 66.5 ° to 80 ° north latitude and 160 ° to 180 ° west longitude. The area is around 582,000 km².
In the north, the Chukchi Sea merges into the "Arctic Ocean" and borders in the north-west on Wrangel Island and via the Longstrasse on the East Siberian Sea . In the east it meets with Northwest Alaska ( USA ) and in the northeast with the Beaufort Sea . In the south it borders on the Bering Strait , which leads to the Bering Sea . The western boundary is Eastern Siberia ( Russia , Asia ); there are the Chukchi Peninsula and the East Siberian mountains .
The sea, named after the Chukchi people of Eastern Siberia , is very shallow with an average depth of only 77 meters. It is only navigable along the Siberian coast from July to October. Numerous animal and bird species are summer guests here.
Oil drilling
The shelf of the Chukchi Sea is estimated at up to 30 billion barrels of oil. In February 2008, the US government announced a successful bid for the exploitation. The final price was $ 2.6 billion. The auction was criticized by environmentalists.
From 2010 to 2015, Royal Dutch Shell was active in the area and worked on exploiting the oil reserves in the Arctic Sea. Also, ConocoPhillips and Statoil Chart wanted from 2014 or 2015 to drill in the Chukchi Sea. Gazprom and its international partners were interested in the Russian part of the Chukchi Sea .
The comparatively expensive production in the Arctic competes with the shale gas and oil obtained by fracking in the USA. After the collapse in oil prices in 2015, all activities were gradually discontinued.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Shell Exits Arctic as Slump in Oil Prices Forces Industry to Retrench. In: The New York Times. September 28, 2015, accessed April 4, 2020 .
Coordinates: 69 ° 41 ′ 19 ″ N , 171 ° 27 ′ 19 ″ W.